It has since occurred to us, however, that there are two problems here.

First, these lines don’t quite scan; in a conventionally formed limerick, the first two lines have nine syllables, the next two have six apiece and the closing line again has nine. Our first two lines had eight syllables apiece.

Second, we weren’t the first to come up with the initial line. It turns out that on April Fool’s Day of this year, Dollar Bill Hiccup had posted this, in a comment on Zero Hedge:

There once was a man named Bernank

Who wanted to fill up his tank.

He shouted 5 dollars!

And he hooted and hollered

But then printed those bucks from his bank!

And, we have since learned, that wasn’t Dollar Bill Hiccup’s first venture into this kind of doggerel. In March 2011, also on Zero Hedge, he came up with these lines:

There once was a man named Bernank

Whose Monetary Policy stank.

As he printed more Dough,

The people said No!

And removed him with an Abrams tank.

For all we know, Dollar Bill Hiccup got the line from somebody else. (Our hunch is that when Ecclesiastes wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun,” he snitched that line from a Hittite, who in turn had cribbed it from an Amalekite.)

We have to say: We still like our second line, since it remains relevant to the latest debate over quantitative easing – the bond-buying and other measures intended to keep interest rates at rock-bottom levels.

So let’s try it again. We’ll start the limerick off, fixing the meter so it scans correctly, and you finish it with three new lines of your own. Between now and the Fed’s next meeting on Sept. 12-13, there’s plenty of time to come up with something fun. Here goes: